Vignettes
by thelittletree
Summary: Small snippets of day-to-day life for Vincent. Living with Tifa, raising a son. These are based on the relationship established (of course) in my previous fics.
1. In Your Head

**In Your Head**

_If you had a bad dream_  
_I would jump inside it_  
_And I would fight for you with all the strength that I could find_  
_I would lead you home_  
_By your tiny hand_  
_If you were mine_  
_If you were mine_

– _If You Were Mine_, Fernando Ortega

* * *

"Daddy?"

Small fingers were patting at his hair, and experience had taught him that they weren't shy about pulling in the middle of the night. Vincent opened his eyes and blinked at the blur of blue-and-white cotton trains hopping at the side of the bed, accompanied by the agitated talking-whispers of a seven year-old who, more than the benefits of an eight-hour sleep, needed the reassurance that the night world was truly as safe and real as the day one.

"Dad, I had a bad dream."

He half-expected to hear Tifa stir beside him, alerted into wakefulness by the fear in her flesh-and-blood's voice. But she continued sleeping, her body seemingly too aware of the approach of seven a.m. to be bothered out of dreamland for much above the house burning down.

Vincent dragged his legs to the side of the bed and sat up, buying a moment to pull his mind together. The old Turk tricks were wearing off. Some mornings, he could feel the years behind him like a long, littered highway.

"Quietly, Jordan." He stood in the darkness and tugged at the tiny sleeve until those small fingers were fidgeting in his own. "Back to bed."

They stepped silently into the hallway, the carpet a still-life of shadows and pale light as the moon peered through the kitchen window. Jordan trotted along obediently to his father's longer strides, now obviously dangling two floppy stuffed animals from the crook of his elbow.

The bed was still warm, and Jordan needed little urging to clamber back under the blankets. Vincent touched the small, hidden feet a moment before settling on the edge of the mattress. Jordan reached out an insistent hand again for his father to take.

"You staying 'til I fall asleep?"

"If you want." He stifled a yawn, recalling nights with not-quite envy when he had watched the sun set, and then watched it rise again without his head hitting a pillow.

"Yeah, stay here." The boy gave a sudden heavy sigh – young, budding consternation for a world he was still discovering boundaries to. "It was just the same dream as before. I wish I could stop dreaming it."

Unresolved fear Vincent knew about. Also unresolved grudges and guilts – but Jordan was too young yet to know about those. "You won't dream it forever."

"I guess." He was squirming, itchy and restless and tired. Sometimes his seven year-old brain wouldn't shut off for anyone. "Do you have bad dreams?"

Not so much anymore. "Everyone does."

"What do you dream about?"

"Things that will give you more bad dreams. Go to sleep."

But now that Jordan had him, he wasn't going to let him go that easily. "Like monsters? Like dead people walking around? Like gross pus, blood, puke … "

"Like leaving the room and going back to bed so that you'll go to sleep?"

Jordan only laughed, dark hair floating against the white of his pillow as he shook his head. Stocky build already, small and thick and brown with an impishly chubby face and mismatched eyes. "That's only a bad dream for me. Your bad dreams are about Mom yelling at you."

Vincent couldn't help a small chuckle. Clever little urchin.

"In my dream, Mom always dies. Sometimes I get scared that it's really going to happen."

"Your mother isn't going to die for a long time," Vincent reassured him, and only realized after a moment that he hadn't been looking Jordan in the eye. It was just the darkness, he told himself promptly. Just the darkness making evil things seem possible.

"But what if she has an accident, or someone kills her?"

"That isn't going to …" But it was a false comfort, and Jordan was really getting too old for parental patronization. "That isn't something we can control."

Or maybe it was because he had noticed, finally started noticing the tiny signs that Tifa …

"So it might happen?"

Tifa was getting older. So much faster than he ever would have wished.

"It might. But that's why … "

"That's why you're here," Jordan said with sudden confidence. "To protect us. Right?"

It wasn't what he had been about to say. But it was both too late, and too early for a conversation as bottomless as this one. "Right."

"You're a good protector, Daddy. Like … like you could chop bad people up with your metal arm."

"Good night, Jordan."

"Like ninjas."

"Good night, Jordan." He stood from the bed to make his point.

"No, no," Jordan protested hastily. "Don't go. I'm going to sleep."

"All right." He sat down again, trying not to indulge in too many fantasies about his side of the bed – warm, with Tifa huddled up against him like a drawing, inexorable shield against insomnia. "No more talking."

"Okay." Jordan twitched a little with a yawn and pulled his fingers out of the shelter of Vincent's hand so that he could roll over. Bad dream pushed into the background, and Vincent really did feel like a protector at that moment. With Jordan's trust, he had admitted long ago, there was very little he wouldn't try to be.

"Good night, Dad. Love you."

"Love you, too." He touched the blankets, as if they needed adjusting. It was an excuse to brush the hair from that warm, still baby-soft forehead.

Three minutes later, Vincent was climbing back under his own blankets and curling carefully up behind Tifa – thirty-two year-old Tifa – and letting the happy mystery of comfort wrapped in touch and smell and the weight of familiarity lull him back to sleep.

Some things needed thought. But not until daylight.


	2. Raising Children is an Ongoing Test You ...

**Raising Children is an Ongoing Test You Haven't Studied For**

Chicken stir-fry. Vincent put his finger between the pages and lay Lily's spine-cracked recipe book flat on the counter. Quick, simple, tasty and, most important so close to grocery day, something they had ingredients for. He scooped his hair into a slapdash ponytail and began scrounging for the correct pots and pans.

Vegetables were scattered on the counter in varying degrees of readiness, water was on the boil for the rice, everything was on hand to complete the stock, including raw chicken on the cutting board, when the front door opened.

"Hey, Dad."

"Off the counter, please."

Jordan obediently picked up his bicycle helmet and ran a hand through flattened chestnut hair, already due for another trim. Short hair suited him better, the straight, compact lines of his springy fourteen year-old body. So did tucked-in shirts and pants without holes in the knees, but that was something he had demanded his own way on. And Tifa had eventually given in, though she still muttered, "Oh god, he's going to school dressed like that?" under her breath when he went out the door in the morning.

"What are you making?"

"Stir-fry." He began to cut the chicken into bite-sized chunks, stopping only once to pop a broken snow pea into his mouth.

Jordan gave a dramatic sigh of relief and leaned against the kitchen doorway, pushing at the heels of his sneakers with his toes. "Good. I thought you were making that chicken catch … catcha-whatever again."

"Cacciatore?"

"Yeah, that's it." He kicked his shoes negligently into the hall and rolled his helmet after them.

"You didn't like that? Go put those away properly, Jordan."

"I guess it was okay." He stepped back out of the room, and Vincent heard the untidy sound of shoes and helmet being piled willy-nilly into the closet.

A simple recipe, cacciatore, though it took a while in the oven. With a quiet sigh, Vincent scratched it from the internal repertoire he kept of things his son would eat. "How was school?"

"All right." Jordan came back into the kitchen and padded around his father to pick at the water chestnuts, flick the switch to the coffee maker and fold the corners of a newspaper left on the table. Then he peered into the fridge, opened a cupboard, and eventually made his way back to the counter. He spent a few seconds restlessly fingering the peppers a moment before catching up with Vincent's elbow.

Vincent eyed him for a moment, tempted, despite the chicken on his hands, to brush aside a fluttering bang from that young forehead.

Jordan tapped the counter idly for a moment like he might have been trying to communicate something through Morse code. And then he seemed to get bored. "Need help with anything?"

"You want to help me with dinner?" The water was boiling. Vincent picked up the bag of rice and turned to the stove. The best way to deal with Jordan, he had learned through experience, was indirectly, with patience and polite ignorance.

"Something wrong with that?"

"No." He finished pouring the rice and turned the burner down a notch. "But I will ask you what you've done with my son."

Vincent didn't need to see him to know Jordan was rolling his eyes. He smiled a little to himself. "Those mushrooms need to be cut up." He pulled a second cutting board out of a drawer and placed it on the counter – without eye contact, and close enough to inspire conversation in confidence. Sometimes it only took a tiny bit of encouragement to bare that early soul.

A few minutes passed in silence as they minced their separate vegetables, Vincent discreetly taking his time as smaller, unpracticed fingers slipped over the mushrooms and struggled to keep the knife straight.

"Um, Dad?"

"Mm?"

He scooped a handful of diced green pepper and dropped it liberally into the pan. Cooking, Tifa had teased him once, was one of the few things he allowed himself to be liberal about. As if Lily had instilled in him a love for food that he simply couldn't back out of. And maybe she had been right, but he had still muttered some excuse and changed the subject.

"Did Mom tell you … " His mind seemed suddenly very preoccupied with making sure the mushrooms didn't move even a millimeter as he sliced them. " … about my science grade?"

So that was bothering him. Vincent pursed his lips and made a show of glancing around the counter for the next ingredient to go under his knife. "She told me."

"Are you supposed to have a talk with me?"

Vincent silently admitted to having purposely procrastinated. He couldn't exactly remember his schooling, but he was sure he wouldn't have appreciated someone constantly looking over his shoulder and commenting on his failings. "If you're trying your best, I don't know what to tell you. We've offered to help with your homework."

"Yeah, I know." He glanced over and made a face. "Eww, broccoli?"

"I thought you liked broccoli."

"Not in stir-fry."

Vincent sighed in defeat. Some things you just accepted gracefully. "I'll make sure not to put any on your plate."

Jordan picked up a pepper seed from the counter and flicked it into the sink. "It's not the homework." He started sawing at a mushroom until it was past saving. "It's … it's the class."

"The teacher?" Vincent gave the rice a few swipes with a spoon.

"No. It's … "

He wasn't so much cutting as mutilating now. Unobtrusively, Vincent switched cutting boards. Maybe Jordan didn't like broccoli, but at least he could take his frustration out a floret without completely destroying it.

"Dad … "

"I'm listening."

"What's it like … " He seemed to lose the question for a second, his fingers folding into his palms. "What's it like, being in love?"

Vincent wondered where he might have missed the turn-off from school to love. He glanced at the clock and realized with a certainty that Tifa was not going to come in and save him from having to answer this one. His son was having trouble in science? He could handle that. But matters of the heart … ? He frowned to himself and began to concentrate on the mushrooms. "Why are you asking?"

"Dad." Exasperated, embarrassed, as any fourteen year-old would be asking the same question. "Just tell me, okay?"

Under the weight of that expectant glare, Vincent took a breath and mentally set everything else aside in the hopes of making an acceptable reply. Lucrecia, followed by years of feeling angry and betrayed and burned; and then Tifa, and the years he had spent so far feeling happy and complete – and it suddenly felt as if he didn't know a thing. Jordan was still a child, and Vincent could remember teaching him to tie his own laces like it had only been a few weeks ago, and where oh where was Tifa when he needed her?

"It's different for everyone," he began, trying not to sound as if he was stalling.

"But there are signs and things, right?"

"Well … "

"Like butterflies in your stomach? And feeling like everything you want to say is coming out wrong?"

Butterflies, yes. He hadn't talked much with Tifa in the beginning, and later she had met him at his own comfort level so he hadn't felt as if he was making forced conversation. But Lucrecia … oh, yes, that had been awkward. "It can certainly start that way."

"But that's not everything, right?" He was busily cutting the broccoli, his production apparently fueled by the hope that it would encourage an answer.

"No, it's not everything." Love was fleeting, but that wasn't everything, either. It was heat, it was hope, it was shelter, it was pain, it was a promise she would eventually break …

Jordan glanced up, and Vincent recognized that look – the abrupt understanding in those astute, inexperienced eyes. "What's it like for you, being in love with Mom?"

That was the million-gil question, wasn't it? It was heaven, opening his eyes every morning and knowing, remembering, hoping. In one hundred years, an exquisite hell of memories.

"Like, how did you know you were in love with her?"

From the moment she had jumped from the bridge. From her first unexpected smile. From that first touch over the card table. And a hundred thousand other clandestine, intimate, aching encounters.

It was time to shift the focus of the conversation.

"What is this about? Is there someone at school you think you might … ?"

After a moment, the question hung where it was, and he cursed his own reluctance. Love was not an easy topic. Easy enough to feel sometimes, despite yourself; harder to think critically about; less attractive to talk about to a budding teenager. He was suddenly very grateful that Tifa hadn't had a daughter.

Jordan stabbed at the broccoli restively, his expression tight with emotions society conversely labeled healthy and something to be secretly ashamed about. "There's this girl in my science class," he mumbled toward the floor.

And suddenly everything was falling into place. Falling grades, falling in love.

"There was this presentation," Jordan continued in a murmur, spinning the knife indolently on the counter. "I couldn't remember my notes. She just kept looking at me."

Vincent felt a stab of sympathy. First love could be a cruel, exhilarating thing.

"She told me she liked the sleeping cat I drew for art class. My teacher hung it in the hall." He rolled the broccoli around on the board with a finger. "I thought of drawing something, just for her, but I don't know what."

Flowers had seemed so overrated. But the moment Lucrecia had pointed out those sweet-smelling apple blossoms, he had been up in a tree collecting them for her. Oh, years and years, and he still didn't know the remedy for the human condition.

The rice was going to be done long before the frying, he realized abruptly. Forcing himself back into the present, Vincent quickly sliced up the last of the mushrooms and reached for the broccoli under his son's hand.

Jordan dropped his arm and sighed heavily. "Should I do anything?"

Vincent turned up the heat under the pan. It was the same question he had asked himself so long ago, when Lucrecia had smiled at him and he had been torn between the paradise she had seemed to offer and the strict obligations of his job.

Though, Lucrecia, and love …

He blinked. Love for Jordan would never be anything like that. It would never be anything he couldn't handle, or face, or embrace. There was no job, no Hojo, no eternity in his way. Simple answers, as clear as day, as easy, as complicated as perimetered life – love was different for everyone. "She would probably appreciate a picture," he stated quietly. And love was always a gift that Jordan, if he could help it in any way, would never have any trouble giving.

"Yeah, I guess." He kicked at the cupboard under the sink until the tap was dripping. "I guess I could draw her another cat." He was chewing at his lip. "This one could be orange, and maybe I could have it chasing a bird or something."

Vincent smiled to himself and added the chicken into the stock with the vegetables. Nothing he couldn't handle. "Go wash your hands, Jordan."

"Why? They're not dirty." He was just balancing between the child and the adult; a fourteen year-old who never cleaned his room and left the milk on the counter and invented indoor games out of particularly well-conceived outdoor games.

"Because your mother is going to ask," Vincent told him. Love, he would eventually realize, was also about following a set of rules. "Now go."

Jordan left the kitchen at a run, still young enough to subsist on the energy of bursting sunlight and crisp autumn air.

Tifa came into the living room after dinner, while he was reading, and sat heavily on the couch. "Today was a long day," she sighed. "Thank you for cooking supper, and for doing the dishes."

"Not a problem." Routine was never the chore Tifa seemed to think it was. "Was the store busy?"

"Very. I think flu season has come early this year." She ran a hand through her hair and leaned back, closing her eyes. "Don't mind me if I'm coughing and sneezing tomorrow."

A little more gray hair, a few more wrinkles. Every now and again he noticed, as if something new drew his attention. But it was just Tifa, and Tifa couldn't help changing with the years.

"Jordan was in a good mood." She smiled and opened her eyes. "Anything particular resolved?"

He took a moment as if to think. "We might've had a talk."

"And I thought you said you didn't know anything about science." She was grinning, and he was suddenly sure it was the grin that had made him fall in love.

Oh, when would a fourteen year-old have been so upset about anything to do with school? "It appears I had the answers after all."

"I knew you would."

"And you know everything, don't you?"

She merely smiled. And Vincent, knowing something she didn't, kept his mouth shut.


	3. Blood and Water, Life Requires Both

**Blood and Water, Life Requires Both**

"You told me it was an illness."

Jordan was hunched on the edge of his bed. Still in his coat and boots with his hands clasped tightly between his knees, his face a shadowed study in the fathoms of thought that could hide behind a vacant expression. Tall at eighteen, almost as tall as his father, practically grown into once-gangly limbs and broadening shoulders, with dark eyebrows and clever, attractive features. Part Tifa, part stranger, all Jordan.

Lost in memories. Lost in the present that was making the memories into lies. Lost in the idea that it might have all been lies.

And, as critical as it was, Vincent had never planned for this moment. Truth be known, he had never expected to have to reveal, or explain, or even be the least bit worried about the truth coming out. And he saw it now for the mistake it had been. Of course there had been necessity. He had simply gotten careless, comfortable with the routine. And routine, as good as it was for his sanity some days, tended to breed blind denial.

Eighteen, almost his own man now, modeled after a man he had respected, trusted all his life. How suddenly the pedestal had been ripped away, how abruptly he had been flung into a brutal fight against self-doubt and identity crisis. How cruel reality was at an age when the future was still an unmapped expedition.

Vincent had never wanted that for his son.

"It is an illness, Jordan." He opened the door slowly, wanting to bring a little bit of light with him into the room. "An illness someone gave me a long time ago."

Jordan's eyes and cheeks were red with the telltale stains of tears roughly discarded. Eyes hard with anger and blame made fiercer by the amount of love and pride that had previously been there. "Why did you let me believe a lie for so long?"

"Because you didn't need to know."

"Dammit!" His expression contorted suddenly and he twisted to face the wall. "I'm not a fucking child!"

He was shaking his head, his mouth quivering as he wept without a sound. And Vincent watched silently, wretchedly, forced to observe what he had no idea how to fix.

"I know you're not a child."

Jordan's knuckles whitened, perhaps wrestling back an impulse for violence. "Just leave me alone. You're not … " A small sob escaped, baritone voice cracking. "You're not even my father."

It was the truth, too. Though Jordan shouldn't have known that, either.

And, halfway to who-knew-where, with no particular destination besides away, Vincent thought he had never really known before what it was to have a broken heart.

* * *

That morning had been like other mornings. Caught at the door.

"Dad?"

Vincent hadn't turned as he had stepped into his boots. There was only one answer, there would always be only one answer, and he had already given it. There was nothing more to say.

"Are you leaving now?"

"I'll be back in a few hours. If your mother comes home before then, tell her to leave the laundry where it is."

Jordan had shifted his weight from one foot to the other like he had been looking for an opening, and Vincent had nearly been able to feel his son's offense at being shrugged off yet again. "Last week you said you'd think about it."

"I've thought about it. The answer is still no."

Jordan had scoffed. Softly, finally understanding. "It's always going to be no, isn't it?"

It was a fight without a solution, a case without a firm verdict, a fact without a loophole. Jordan wanted to hunt.

His reasons he had stated confidently at the dinner table weeks ago: it was good pay, he had been practicing day and night at a firing range, Vincent could get him in and train him in the things he didn't know. In most cases, Vincent had guessed, a father would be proud to have his son follow in his footsteps.

But not in this case. And Vincent hadn't even been able to explain why. So many times, just walking out the door without another word, because another word would never, ever be the last word. Jordan was almost as stubborn as his mother.

And, oh, Vincent was tired of lying and avoiding and of the animosity that was growing between them until it practically blocked out the sight of one another.

"Jordan, I've told you before. I need solitude."

But Jordan had only shaken his head, unsatisfied at last with anything less than absolute candor, when a younger Jordan might have simply sulked and kicked the wall trim and gone to throw rocks into the Nibelheim well with his friends.

"C'mon Dad, why don't you just say it? You don't think I can do it." He had sighed then, as if the accusation had suddenly drained him. "You know what? Never mind." He had waved a hand, as if to push his father out the door. "You just don't want to face the fact that I'm not a kid anymore, and that's your problem. I'll find a job hunting somewhere else."

And Vincent had frowned as he had done up his coat, refusing to watch his son walk away. Yet again.

Hojo, he had thought bitterly, had better be burning in hell.

Later, when the world had already been compromised, he had tried to tell himself that he had been distracted. Too distracted by the argument to realize he had had an audience until it was too late. He should have expected it, really – but he hadn't. It had just been one more fight, like a dozen others, and Jordan had given no clue about what he might have had in mind even then.

How could he have known? How could he have prevented? Still, he had blamed himself. He had become lax over the years, confident that the spots he had chosen to hunt in were far enough from the well-used routes to keep his secrets hidden. And perhaps he had expected too much from Jordan, thinking he would simply accept the lies, the evasion, just because he was his father. In the end, it might have been better to have been honest with Jordan from the beginning. His father was an experiment, a semi-dynamic institution for housing demons, an abomination his mother had fallen in love with.

But it had come too late. Staring down at the second track of chocobo prints in the snow, the stamp of boots he had recognized from weeks of mud treads in the hallway, and hoping against the evidence that Jordan hadn't seen anything.

* * *

It was getting dark, but Vincent barely let the fact filter in. What meaning did the approach of evening have for him anymore? He couldn't help believing there would be a time again, someday, when he could go back home, but it wouldn't be tonight. And even when he did go home, things would be different.

He had lost Jordan's trust over a curse Lily and Tifa had loved him in spite of and a lie he wouldn't have known how to begin unraveling. He was so good at keeping secrets, they had hardly seemed like secrets sometimes. Just another part of the life he had somehow been invited into. One of the few things that didn't change as the people around him did.

He had found her gravestone first, before finding the bench. Compared to Tifa and Jordan she had been a part of his life only briefly, but she had affected so much in that time. Given him company like a warm blanket and somewhere to go when he had had nowhere else to go.

Exactly what he needed today.

Lily would have warned him about keeping secrets.

He felt a presence nearby before he heard a footfall in the snow. And he could feel the flicker, like the bare heat from a candle, before Jordan even spoke.

"Dad?"

He turned his head in silent acknowledgment. Despite the part of him that wanted to disappear into the night.

"How long have you been here?"

Did it matter?

Jordan was walking faster now. "Mom said I might find you here." A few steps more brought him into view. Dressed in his bulky winter coat, with hair ruffled playfully in the wind and face taut with the shadow of a previous anxiety, he looked so much younger than eighteen for a moment. Just a boy, a vulnerable boy. Waking up, and finding out the nightmare didn't always go away with the daylight. And looking for his father, the man who wasn't his father, the man who had lied to him, the man who had always protected him and loved him as fiercely as any man who had been given everything his starved heart desired.

Jordan stood looking at him for a moment before he sat down.

Vincent took a breath. He felt a brief flash of anger, and then it was gone. There was no way to change or deny what was fact. "I'm not your father."

"I know. I … I found the insemination documents in Mom's closet this summer."

Vincent turned, surprised enough to move out of the heavy weave hours of thought had twisted around him. Jordan, it seemed, had been keeping secrets for him that hadn't been secrets for almost six months.

Jordan let out a laugh in a tiny puff of air and began picking at the old green paint beneath them. "It just didn't seem to matter at the time." He shrugged, like an overture to apology. "I shouldn't have brought it up. I was just … " He was shaking his head as he glanced up, and there was anger and pain in his expression. Distrusted, betrayed, the only one not in his father's confidence about the gruesome truth – especially considering that Vincent was the last man on earth who should have been comforting him after bad dreams. "You were never going to tell me about that … that transformation."

"I wouldn't ever have harmed you, Jordan." It seemed important to make sure he knew.

"I know. I know that." He stood suddenly and stared out at the rows of tombstones, hands stuffed into his pockets.

"I didn't keep the truth from you because I didn't trust you."

Jordan didn't reply for a moment, as if he was trying to decide whether or not he believed that. And then he sighed. "I can't say it didn't freak me out, to see you change … like that. Other things made sense after I knew, though. Why you can't take a week off, why I can't find any information on illnesses that don't make people age … "

He pivoted abruptly to face a tree to his left. Not looking at Vincent, but wanting to make sure it was understood that he meant what he was saying. "But now I want to know why you are … the way you are. Because, I guess … "

He was kicking at the snow a little, and Vincent couldn't help a small twitch of his mouth. Eighteen, and almost a man. But Vincent would always be able to see the boy.

"I guess I'd sort of been telling myself that it was okay that you weren't my father, because we've been a lot closer than a lot of my friends are to their fathers."

Years of experience didn't take away the doubt; it had been a long time since he and Jordan had talked so candidly about his place in his son's life. Now he understood that his place was beyond fear, beyond prejudice, beyond hatred. He was Jordan's father, and he would continue to be even when Jordan was a man much older than himself.

"I'm sorry, Jordan." And he was. He had never meant to shut Jordan out of anything. There was simply the part of himself he shut away as often as he could, the part he could almost forget about when he was at home. The part he was sure most people would reject him for, if they knew. "I should've trusted you to be able to handle the truth. But I was afraid you might … "

"Dad."

He looked up, surprised at the interruption. "Yes?"

Jordan smirked and, stepping up, gently smacked his father in the forehead with his palm. "You shouldn't let old age affect your brain capacity." And then he turned and began to walk out of the cemetery.

Vincent chuckled quietly to himself for a few moments before standing and following.

No, his son was not a child anymore.


	4. First Impressions Aren't All They're Cra...

**First Impressions Aren't All They're Cracked Up To Be**

Vincent glanced up from the salad he was garnishing, wondering, hoping he might have misunderstood. "Pardon me?"

"Dad, please." Jordan shot him a look as he juggled the bread basket into one arm to leave the other free for the butter. "I really like this girl. I don't want to freak her out."

Vincent sighed and opened the oven to check on the casserole. "You could just tell her what I used to tell you." Almost done. He stood to turn the heat down a little on his glazed carrots and went back to shredding a little parmesan. "It doesn't have to be complicated."

"Well, neither does this. You don't even have to say anything. I'll just introduce you and we'll eat." He grabbed up the salt and pepper shakers as an afterthought before heading out of the kitchen and into the dining room. "I already know Mom's going to make most of the conversation, anyway."

Tifa had been looking forward to this all day, and no doubt she had the entire evening scripted. It had worked before with a teacher of Jordan's, years ago, giving Vincent the freedom of a comfortable role within a tag-team – he made the food, she made the welcome. Though he had still grumbled a little beforehand, uneasy with the idea of small talk with an outside observer to the little haven he had with his family.

He sprinkled the salad with the grated cheese and checked the time. Like clockwork. He had gotten good at this.

Tifa came into the kitchen at that moment with her hair down, dressed casually but appealingly with only a bare amount of make-up on. Smiling, natural, beautifully forty-three. This, particularly, was a look he liked on her, and by the way she glanced at him as she entered she was well aware of it. "Mm, smells good." She ruffled her bangs out of her face as she leaned in to dip a finger into the brown sugar-syrup on the carrots. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were trying to make a good impression."

"Hmh." He opened the oven and took the casserole out. Jordan had been styling his hair for months, had changed almost his entire wardrobe, and had even taken to wearing cologne sometimes. Really, the least his father could do was make a decent meal for the girl. "It's nothing extraordinary."

She grinned as she gave him a quick, one-armed hug around the waist. "If you say so. Oh, are those cherry tomatoes?"

"For the salad."

"Just one … "

"For the salad."

"I'm just taking one."

He sighed and, picking up the wooden spoon behind him, glibly swatted her on the bum. She gave a gratifying squeal and nearly tickled him into the stove.

Jordan, ducking around the corner long enough to grab a pile of napkins, glared balefully at them. "Would you stop fooling around and help me get the food on the table? She's going to be here any minute."

Vincent obediently turned to spoon the carrots into a bowl. "Apparently, I'm your first son," he informed Tifa as soon as Jordan was out of earshot.

"So I've heard."

He put the casserole on a burner pad and raised an eyebrow, somehow unsurprised. "So you knew about this."

Unfazed by his tone, she merely gave his ponytail a little tug. "Actually, Jordan talked to me about it last night. I told him it was a good idea."

He thought her smile was a tad too smug as she unapologetically pinched another tomato. "And you don't mind letting this girl believe that you're my mother?" It was a mock innocence he knew wouldn't fool her for an instant, and a tender spot he wouldn't dare prod in most circumstances. But she had started it.

Impervious to the jibe, however, Tifa's smile remained. "Jordan wants a nice, comfortable family dinner with his girlfriend, and he thought the truth might be a little much for a first impression. And I agreed with him. So, a nice, comfortable family dinner is what he's going to get."

And Vincent knew Jordan hadn't even left him a chance. Clever urchin was getting to be as smart as his mother. "I don't know … "

"I do." She crossed her arms and the smile faded for a moment, replaced with the look that meant she wasn't asking anymore. "You know he's not ashamed of you, why be difficult about this? If it's a serious relationship, he'll have to tell her eventually, but otherwise … " She gave a small shrug and, after a pause, stepped up on the pretense of straightening his collar. And he felt his resolve start to crumble as she glanced up into his face. "This is the first girl he's ever brought home, and it's important to him. If he wanted me to be the first empress of Wutai for her, I would be. And so would you."

She bounced up on her toes to give him a quick kiss on the cheek, as if to seal the deal, before walking out of the kitchen with the salad.

With a sigh, Vincent picked up the casserole before following her into the dining room, muttering under his breath, "Maybe just the empress' son."

* * *

Farah, it turned out, was a pretty, curly-haired high school senior who looked, if possible, more anxious about dinner at Jordan's house than Jordan did. Dressed charmingly in a blue-pleated skirt and an untailored blouse, she kept adjusting her clothing and almost looked apologetic about the ring through her eyebrow as she was ushered out of the hallway.

Jordan flashed a briefly pained, pleading look over her head that Vincent couldn't miss, and he knew Tifa had been right. Empress, father, long-lost brother. He would have been anything.

"Farah, this is my Mom … "

Tifa's smile was inevitably full of the candid and welcoming affability she had been saving up for hours. "It's nice to meet you, Farah."

Defenseless against Tifa's social warmth, honed after years of customer service at the health store she now managed, the girl's lips twitched shyly in response. "Thanks. You, too."

" … and … " Jordan sent Vincent one last hard look, as if to remind him. " … this is my step-brother, Vincent. He lives in Kalm."

The curve of her lips faltered as she glanced at him, and Vincent was almost sure Tifa would have stepped on his foot if he hadn't been out of reach. Though it wasn't as if he was being purposefully intimidating, most of the time. Trying to relax what he suddenly recognized as rigid posture, he nodded a greeting.

She nodded stiffly in return and glanced back at Jordan as if for a cue, nearly catching him in the act of making helpless hand gestures at his 'brother'. But Jordan covered adequately by stepping up to the table and pulling a chair out for her.

"Well, why don't we eat?"

And that seemed an excellent excuse for ignoring the glare that told Vincent the next time Jordan brought a girl home, Tifa was going to make sure his father was out of the house, preferably in another town somewhere.

As dinner progressed, however, Farah seemed to get over a good portion of her timidity as Tifa and Jordan drew her into conversation. A history buff and one of the school's top soccer players, she had a few concrete interests that were easily picked up on and expanded, and soon the camaraderie and affection between Jordan and herself was obvious as they joked and laughed and interrupted each other's stories. Satisfied, Vincent picked up his glass of red wine and leaned back from the table, letting himself slip into the background. He was the brother, and she seemed like a nice, gullible kind of girl. Jordan had nothing to worry about.

Jordan was buttering a roll when he noticed that his date's plate was empty. He smiled and gestured at the table. "C'mon, Farah, there's lots of everything. You want something else?"

She smiled back and shrugged a little. "Maybe those carrots. I've never had them before."

"Yeah, my Dad makes the best carrots."

Vincent glanced up in time to see Jordan's eyes widen as he realized his slip-up. After a second of dismayed silence, however, he abruptly amended, "I mean, they're my Dad's recipe. Vincent made them."

Clumsy, and Vincent wondered if maybe it had all been for nothing. But Farah merely continued smiling and, after a moment, seemed to gather herself enough to glance across the table. "They're really good, Vincent," she told him sincerely.

He had to admit some surprise. She hadn't needed to address him. "Thank you."

Her smile widened a tiny bit before she found something to do in reaching for her own wine. "Where is your father, by the way?" she asked, glancing at Jordan before she took a careful sip. "I thought you said I was going to meet him."

Jordan took a moment wiping off his butter knife before answering. "He's at work. You'll probably see him another day. D … uh, Vincent, could you pass me the carrots, please?"

It sounded like an obvious attempt to change the subject, but if Farah had any suspicions, or other questions about Jordan's absent father, they were caught in her throat as she choked suddenly on her wine. Vincent moved to put the carrots down as Jordan reached instead for a glass of water to offer.

And, following Farah's eyes, Vincent belatedly realized the cause of her unexpected distress.

Right through her field of vision, and he hadn't given it one thought. Most of the time it was just his left hand now, just another part of his body – admittedly hidden as best he could under long, buttoned sleeves – but they were large, sharp, unmistakably golden metal fingers. And they would naturally have given anyone a turn.

"I'm sorry," Farah managed between coughs. "I … I spilled my wine."

"Don't worry about it," Tifa said automatically. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah." She glanced up, and Vincent found himself meeting her flustered gaze for a second before she stood and pushed her chair out. "Sorry, I'm just going to go to the bathroom."

"It's on the left," Jordan directed her before she hurried away.

"Is she okay?" Tifa asked once they heard the sound of a door closing.

Jordan shrugged with a grimace and made a futile attempt to dab up the spilled wine. "She might still be a little nervous. She told me she's never been very good with meeting other people's families. Once, I guess she dumped a whole plate of squash into her boyfriend's mother's lap."

"Ooh … "

"And his mother started crying and calling her names in front of his whole family."

Halfway through the exchange, Vincent realized that no one but he had seen her reaction to his claw. Just his hand, just another part of regular everyday life for all of them. It was almost as gratifying as it was disturbing.

"Well, she won't get that here." Tifa stood and glanced over the table. "Maybe we should change the tablecloth. She doesn't need to feel guilty _and_ nervous." She picked up the casserole and put it on her chair before starting to gather the plates. "Vincent, can you get another one out of the closet?"

The linen closet was in the hall. On his way past the bathroom Vincent gave the door a wide berth to allow for privacy, but couldn't help hearing, over the white noise of running water, the unmistakable sound of a sniffle.

" … red wine on the tablecloth, some first impression. I told him this wasn't a good idea … "

The water shut off just as Vincent was closing the closet door. He was about to make a quick retreat before he could startle her in the hallway, but the sound of her hand on the doorknob told him it was too late for that. With an inward sigh at the cursed inevitability of a social awkwardness Jordan had so wanted to avoid, he waited against the wall to give her the space to ignore him and the left arm no one had bothered to make an excuse for.

She stepped out and, lost for a moment in her own thoughts, belatedly noticed him standing by the closet. "Oh!" She hopped back in surprise as if they might have been on a collision course, and her shoulders tensed faintly in fight or flight.

"I'm sorry," Vincent apologized quietly. "I didn't mean to startle you."

She gave a small shrug and mumbled something, her eyes eventually settling on the tablecloth. Then she glanced up at him in a sudden flush of embarrassment. "Oh. Red wine … " She almost seemed to wince. "It doesn't come out of anything, does it?"

"It's all right." It was a mechanical response, and after a moment he scrounged for another platitude, something comfortably banal. "Don't worry about it."

"Okay." She gave a small self-conscious smile and glanced toward the dining room. And then she hesitated.

Vincent steeled himself, instinctively anticipating the inevitable questions. What wasn't he willing to do for Jordan?

"I … " She paused, looking uneasily at her feet. "I'm sorry for reacting like that to … to you." She bit her lip and dared to look him in the eye. "That was probably really insulting. I always manage to do this … "

Not a question about his arm, but genuine remorse. Shy, but she had felt the need to apologize, in case she had hurt his feelings. Young, he found himself thinking. Young, and from another generation. Maybe the world really was changing outside of this house.

"I … I'm almost glad … " She was nearly muttering toward the floor. " … his father wasn't here to see it."

She really liked Jordan, Vincent realized, and she wanted to be liked by his family. He had never had a monopoly on social awkwardness. Sometimes for something you wanted, or someone you loved, you had to swallow your pride and acknowledge that you were flawed and human and clumsy.

He was pleased, suddenly, to be able to console her with the truth. "Jordan's father wouldn't have cared about a little spilled wine."

Farah raised her head and gave a small, shy smile. "Thanks. But I know Jordan wanted to make a good impression. He didn't say anything, but I could tell. He talks about his dad all the time." She made a tiny sound in her throat, like a scoff. "I wanted things to go perfectly."

It was amusing, in a way, to think that this pretty, innocent girl might have wanted to be perfect, to impress him of all people. "No one is perfect, least of all Jordan's father."

"I guess." She seemed unconvinced, though.

But now wasn't the time to try and convince her. Vincent gestured toward the dining room over her shoulder. "Your dinner is getting cold."

"Yeah, probably." She smiled a little. "They are really good carrots, by the way," she added as they headed back to the table.

The evening ended without further incident. They had coffee in the living room for half and hour and, while Jordan was taking some of the dishes into the kitchen, Vincent felt the necessity of saying something, if only so she wouldn't be embarrassed later by what she had said when she eventually found out who he was. "Farah?"

She turned to him and smiled a little. No longer so intimidated by him, he noticed with some satisfaction.

"I want you to know, for later, that you made a good impression on me."

She blinked and seemed a little confused. But before she could say anything, Jordan came sauntering back into the room with a grin to sit down next to her.

So Vincent stood. Let them finish their conversations. His part in this was over and, for all of the double-speak, he thought he had done fairly well. Time to go to bed and leave Jordan reassured that his date had gone on as uncomplicated by the complicated truth as could be.

Tifa was sitting in a rocking chair on his way to the stairs. She winked at him as he approached and he smiled a little. "Goodnight, Tifa."

He instantly felt the blunder like a sudden stumble. No one called their mother by her first name. Though, perhaps Farah hadn't heard, or she had passed it off as an idiosyncrasy …

Though he could nearly feel her eyes boring into the space between his shoulder blades.

"Jordan …" And it was a whisper he knew he shouldn't have been able to hear. "That isn't … he isn't your father, is he?"

He had given her too many clues, he realized too late, and was probably going to hear about it the morning. But for tonight, he was going remorselessly to bed, with an honest smile on his face.


	5. Pillow Talk This Is Not

**Pillow Talk This Is Not**

_Here in your arms where the world is impossibly still_  
_With a million dreams to fulfill_  
_And a matter of moments until the dancing ends_  
_Here in your arms when everything seems to be clear_  
_Not a solitary thing would I fear_  
_Except when this moment comes near the dancing's end_

– _Until_, Sting

* * *

It wasn't surprising, and it was far from the first time. Thinking about rain or grass or the aberrant bone-cracking unnaturalness of familiar transformations. Thinking about wind and hunting, and then the mundane – cooking, cleaning – which were memories all the same, though from a different cellar. Thinking about everything, anything, trying to be somewhere else just for a few more minutes and not look into her eyes, not think about her here with him, just a few minutes more …

But it didn't work, and he wondered if it ever would again. Like too many times before, he was spent, gasping, his elbows shuddering him down to her while she ran her palms over his shoulders and whispered into his ear, "It's all right. It's not your fault."

But it didn't feel all right, because it was just another bite of sour proof that she was older and he was not, even if he felt older in every way but this. Too, too solid, eternally twenty-seven. It felt like failure. And he knew she knew he would have caused himself pain to deny it, maybe especially in this. Because she still felt, tasted, sounded like Tifa in the dark, and he didn't want to admit that it sometimes seemed like he was the one who was changing, going backwards.

"I'm sorry." The words didn't mean enough, but he couldn't say any more. Not at these fragile moments, when it felt like one word too loud might bring the future in to lay waste to the present, and the past. When he felt desiccated, empty and cold with sweat, and didn't want her to know because she might still be able to feel the way it used to be, and he couldn't have made himself ruin the illusion for her.

"I told you, it's all right. It doesn't matter. My body is slower now, that's all."

Eventually it would be slow enough that at any moment she could just stop. And he would be the one unable to catch up with her.

"Vincent?" Her hands had stilled on his shoulders and he could feel the prick of her fingernails. He could still remember nights, years past, when she had broken the skin and he had laughed at her apologies because the scars of her passion would be gone in a day. He had sort of thought she would always be able to make more. But now he wished some of the scars would have stayed, to mark him. To remind him in the future that he had belonged to her, once upon a time. That his flesh had been hers to crash against and rip to pieces.

He had been silent for too long, he knew suddenly, and she was uneasy. He pulled back a little to kiss her, and he could feel the unfinished tide of arousal in her lips and the small, restless twitches of her limbs. It was familiar territory, and in a moment the cords of cold fear began to relax again, retreat into the back of his mind under the undeniable reality of the softness of her mouth and the tension in the legs wrapped around his waist. "Then I suppose I'll have to slow down a little."

Though it never seemed to matter. Slow, slower, slowest, his body still betrayed him. A twenty-seven year old libido, and sometimes it was a month between the nights she responded to his advances. So that by the time she was returning those feather-kisses, her fingers already knowing what he would feel all the way to the soles of his feet, he was too willing, too ready, too impatient as much as he tried to hide it or hold himself back.

The chemistry was no longer exactly right. There was no longer a fail-safe battle plan he could rely on to be successful. He was perceptibly losing control, sand through his fingers. If he had ever had any control over the merciless way time marched on.

Change felt like acquiescence. But in this case it was the only option left. And he couldn't pretend anymore that he couldn't see the gaping holes in the illusion.

She opened to his kisses, to his touch, and it was joy and pain to hear her moan and sigh, and not be right there with her.

She curled up into his arms afterward and kissed his throat, like nothing was different from any other time. And it was a little bit of relief. "I love you," she breathed into his skin and burrowed further into him, under the blankets.

There was an uncomfortable lump in his throat, and he almost grimaced as he swallowed, knowing she would notice. "I love you, too."

The sweep of her hands was abruptly heavier, rubbing into his muscles as if she was trying soothe some physical discomfort. And he was instantly, ashamedly aware of the fact that the bridge of his nose was stinging. Only in his dreams had he ever cried over the future, where he couldn't seem to control the waves of misery and empty darkness.

"Vincent?"

He took a breath, determined to steady his voice. "Hm?"

"It bothers you, doesn't it?"

He almost asked her what she was talking about. But the rational part of him, established even below the fear, knew he couldn't do that to her. There were things that had to be talked about, before they turned into chasms too wide to re-cross, and it took courage to bring them out into the open where they might snarl everything up. "It doesn't bother me."

"It isn't the same anymore, though. Sometimes I'm so tired when I get home, all I want to do is sleep." She pressed her mouth against the side of his jaw, as if he might simply take it as a kiss. "I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize." He was adamant about this. She was never to blame herself. He drew her a little closer, wanting to smother her feelings of culpability away. "Don't ever apologize. It doesn't bother me." He tried to smile, and pressed his mouth to her forehead so she could feel the gesture. "Believe it or not, I didn't get into this for the sex."

She was too still, too quiet to be brushing the conversation away with a smile or a chuckle for what really wasn't very funny. Finally, she whispered, "Sometimes it actually seemed like time was standing still." She had been cutting her hair, shorter and shorter, to make it easier to take care of. But it was the same clean, healthy smell as he buried his mouth and nose in it. It was always the details that didn't change. "Sometimes it still does, when I look at you. Sometimes I forget that I've gotten older at all."

"You haven't aged to me." It was the details that reminded him. The gestures, the expressions, the laugh, the everyday things like the way she turned on the radio to dust the house, the way she kicked her way into her cardio shoes. Her eyes, too, he realized. Her eyes would always be the same when everything else about her had changed. "You're still the Tifa I wanted from the beginning."

"You don't feel like that Tifa is slipping away?" Her voice was muffled and soft, hardly more than a breath against his skin.

The stinging sensation was working its way to the end of his nose. He closed his eyes, trying to scrape together the wall she knew too well how to bypass. "I can't help but remember that you're slipping away. But it doesn't change my feelings." He swallowed again, reflexively, and cursed himself. He just wanted to forget once more, to hold her without thinking about a time when she would forever be at least six feet away from him, separated by earth and heaven and hell. "I'm always going to love you."

"I'm always going to love you, too."

Her fingernails were suddenly sharp against his skin, gripping him painfully as if she was afraid of him disappearing. And his lungs burned for the air necessary for what he feared might end up being a choked exhale, knowing the marks would be gone in a day.

"Vincent … " And there were tears she was unashamed to shed in her voice. "You have to promise that you'll find someone else."

But he couldn't speak under the force it took to keep his jaw from trembling. Though the tears still came, and the heat of them surprised him. It had been a long time.

"You have to promise. I can't stand the thought of you living alone." She moved and her hands were on his neck, in his hair in the dark, and he saw the moment in her expression when her fingers encountered the warm moisture on his face. "Oh … oh, Vincent … " He doubted she realized that she was pulling his hair. "Don't believe it's going to be the end. You're going to have so much time … "

Oh yes, there was going to be so much time. And he knew for one searing split-second that there was no way he could bear this by himself any longer. "It's going to break me, Tifa. There won't be anyone else."

"No, no, don't say that." Her hands were like a punishment for a moment before she seemed to realize that she might be hurting him and she relaxed her grip. But the hard resolve in her eyes was almost worse, and he abruptly remembered why he had always kept the burden to himself. "Maybe there's a way we can distance ourselves before the end, so it's not so hard … "

"No, Tifa."

"But, by then … "

"No." He felt stifled, barely audible, and needed to shrug away from the reality, the pain, the tragedy he shouldn't have loosed to her. "I'm taking every second with me."

She seemed ready to argue against the judgment behind his choice, and he steeled himself for the inevitable agony of sifting through hopes and solutions he had long ago discarded. But then, as if the darkness might have let her see the truth, the stiffness began to drain out of her body.

Silently, somewhere between soft apology and careful comfort, she curled up beneath his chin and held him for a wound beneath his skin that would never heal. And he deftly covered the wound again, because he couldn't continue living a sane life with it out in the open.

"Tifa."

"Yes?" Voice small and soft.

He knew she might not accept it easily, when all her nature told her to do was find a way to fix it. "We need to put this conversation behind us." He could feel her hands turning into fists and quickly continued explaining. "I can't think about the future everyday. You need to wake up tomorrow and continue as if time is standing still. There's no answer I can live with but that one."

He should never have burdened her with it, he knew now. He should have lied and let her believe whatever she wanted. Yes, he would find someone else. Yes, he would be fine when she was gone. No worries, Tifa, I'll be whistling a tune a week after you're dead.

Though she might not have believed him, not entirely. Even a hundred conversations might not have convinced her. And he could never have withstood a hundred conversations.

Her arms tightened around him and there was warmth on his throat, unmistakable for anything but what it was. "I can do that," she told him thickly.

And her wordless pity wasn't so bad for right now, he decided after a moment, when she was holding him like this and they were floating together in the same fading universe. He was sure he would remember this moment, in years and years to come, when he felt alone and misunderstood in a world that would constantly be leaving him behind. Tifa had looked into his fear, into her future, had known the full extent of what she was going to have to do, and what she was going to put him through.

And had held on anyway.

It wasn't surprising, maybe, when the early morning hours brought him a nightmare. Stumbling along, alone and searching through a crumbling house he vaguely recognized as their own, except it had too many doors and all of the lights were broken.

But Tifa woke him up to wrap herself back up in his arms. And he didn't dream again.


	6. Marry Me

**Marry Me**

Vincent quietly closed the door behind them before turning to help Tifa slip out of her coat and submitting to her ritual of patting the snow out of his hair. He wouldn't wear a hat, no matter what she threatened him with, and eventually she had seemed to accept his refusal. Though she was determined to keep the snow from melting into his scalp, as if he might catch his death of cold. She had become fussy that way in the last couple of years, doggedly taking care of a man who physically had never needed much taking care of.

In growing contrast to herself, he couldn't have helped noticing. Though he never said so out loud.

She grinned up at him as she finished and batted him in the face with her snowy mit. And they only deigned to glance up out of their impromptu kiss as sudden, thumping footsteps announced the arrival of a boisterous two-year old who had probably been up for hours, waiting impatiently for everything to start.

"G'ampa!"

Tifa smiled and knocked him teasingly with her elbow before picking up the bag of gifts they had brought. "Good morning, Connie. What do I have here?"

Connie, disheveled green sleeper bunched and twisted and falling off one shoulder, came to a sudden stop in front of her grandmother and peered at the colorfully wrapped packages. "Presents!" she identified with a squeal.

"I'm going to put them under the tree. Do you want to help me?"

She seemed uncertain for a few seconds, her young, chubby cheeks falling slack as she tried to decide between what were probably two almost equally imperative desires. And then she ran abruptly to her grandfather and grabbed onto his pant leg, face almost hidden behind sleep-muted curls as if she was afraid she might have chosen wrongly.

Tifa laughed as she straightened up, happily defeated. "I guess Grandpa still beats out the holidays."

Vincent merely smirked, not displeased with the outcome. And Tifa gave the pair of them a distinctly cheeky smile before heading into the living room. It was no secret that he had become one of Connie's favorite people. Mostly, Tifa made sure to tell him regularly, because he let her wrap him unapologetically around her little finger.

Small hands tugged at Vincent's pants. And, after glancing into those solemn blue eyes, too absorptive and deserving for anything less than all of his attention, he crouched down to address his granddaughter. "Everyone seems to think this is a special day, Connie." He plucked gently at her sleeper until it was falling back into place. "What do you think?"

She stared at him wordlessly, sucking on the thumb of her sleeper.

"I thought so, too. A lot of commotion to give us an excuse to fuss over you. Not that you'd complain, I'm sure." And not that he was really complaining, either, he knew as he hefted her into his arms. It had been a long time since Jordan had been this young, and no excuse was too minor if it allowed him another visit with this small warm bundle of unconditional love. He knew too well that this wonderful stage of childhood ended far too soon.

She lay her head on his shoulder, tired enough to be put back to bed. A special day, maybe, but two year-old excitement only lasted as long as two year-old stamina, and even presents and grandpa fell in line after needs first.

Tifa was nearly finished stacking the gifts under the tree when he stepped into the living room, the play of tiny, colorful lights on her hair drawing his attention from the rest of the impractical embellishments of the season. And, like a reflex, he began to remember the evening of Jordan's first festival.

Putting Jordan to bed and closing the door, being pulled along in the dark to stuff stockings and put the gifts in place. Watching the lights flash multicolored fire on her skin and in her hair, listening to her laugh excitedly under her breath until he was almost laughing himself, nearly knocking a lamp over in attempts to shush each other. Drawing her back to bed before she could nitpick the details and not sleeping for a long time.

There had been a lot of years, but this one was always the most vivid. Maybe because it had been the first, and she had gone to so much trouble to make it memorable. Not until years later had he realized it hadn't all been for Jordan.

She got up onto her knees as she turned to look at him with an emerging smile. And he realized belatedly that he had been smiling first.

Connie's parents were still asleep. The boneless slump of Connie herself told Vincent she was moments away from joining them. It was not quite seven. Time either to get on with the show, or to find a comfortable place on the couch. Tifa's indulgent smile was almost as much relief as she rejoined him in the living room.

Then, with one generation sleeping on his shoulder, and another curled up beside him with her head pillowed on his knee, Vincent leaned back to observe the slowly maturing morning. Content, for the moment, to let the day etch itself into his memory for the Winter Festivals he would be spending alone in years and years to come.

* * *

Breakfast was a desperately informal affair. Some much needed coffee, a plastic container of muffins Tifa had made the evening before, some fruit Farah had cut up in the fridge – creative finger food that succeeded in distracting Connie into eating when a few minutes previous had seen her absolutely against delaying presents for getting dressed. A morning of pajamas and yawns and soft conversation, void of work and errands and any reason to hurry when the house was warm and the snow was fluttering lazily against the kitchen window.

After they had eaten, Jordan borrowed a few minutes to lead his father into the den. It was bigger, he realized as his son pushed aside the curtain-in-lieu-of-a-door and ushered him into the makeshift studio. And Jordan was smiling privately as he waited for his father to finish looking around. "Most of the money I've made so far has gone right back into this room," he commented idly, as if he had been privy to Vincent's thoughts.

Open jars of paints, racks of brushes, boxes of charcoal and numbered pencils took up most of the available space. It hadn't been that long since he had been down here, Vincent recognized. Jordan had been busy. "So, you and Farah are making enough … "

Jordan's sudden warning glare effectively shut his mouth, and he almost smiled at the chiding quality of his son's expression. Once you were a parent, it changed the way you dealt with everything – money, free time, other people – maybe especially your own parents. And from the moment Farah had been positively pregnant, Jordan had put down a set of rules. They wanted to do it themselves, their way, and if they needed help they would ask for it.

And, so far, the experience had ranged from terrifying to hilarious – from the first dirty diaper to the day Connie had eaten half of the leaves off a houseplant. He and Tifa had watched as the boy who had sometimes taken perfectly good clocks apart, who had run away from home twice, who had unleashed a jar of grasshoppers into the kitchen had slowly learned how to care for a baby daughter. And Vincent had never felt so qualified to be giving advice in his life.

"Yes, Dad, we're making enough. I'm making enough. And if you try to give us a cheque again this year I'm going to tear it up and throw it in the fireplace." He glared a moment longer as if to drive the point home before turning to an easel, imposing even shunted into a corner where distractions were probably minimal. There was a sheet thrown over it, and Vincent became fairly sure of the real reason he had been brought down here. Every painting so far had been displayed to the obliging, supportive cushion of his family before it had ever been unveiled it the piranha-like critics.

"This is my most recent one." He fingered the sheet almost anxiously, and Vincent guessed the rest. His most recent, probably unprecedented, possibly stark and raw. Vincent wondered if he was about to be the first to see it out of everyone.

"I really needed to be satisfied with it," Jordan continued in a murmur. "And just so you know, I'm not planning to sell it or showcase it. It's just been there in my mind for so long I just had to, you know … " He shrugged faintly and smirked, trying to gloss over his moment of vulnerability. " … let it out, I guess."

And, as if he couldn't wait any longer, he declined anymore preamble to pull the sheet away. And Vincent was forced into the position of staring in silence, caught somewhere between shock, almost disbelief, and wanting to spare the feelings of his son. It was …

"You can say you hate it, if you want," Jordan excused him hastily, his attention focused increasingly on retying his robe. "I knew, even as I was sketching it, that you probably wouldn't understand why I might want to put it on paper. This is probably a moment you want to forget. But, I guess, to me … " He glanced up with the suggestion of a smile playing at one corner of his mouth, under the rough scratch of stubble. " … this was the day I was finally completely introduced to you."

It was him. Washed-out landscape fading into the background, trees little more than streaks of brown and black against a whitish sky. Himself unequivocally in the foreground, hunched in the snow, coat puddled in his shadow. Half-obscured by the quivering wings of Chaos.

Mid-transformation was a uncomfortable period of time, for a lot of reasons. It was a disturbing, horrifying, repulsive thing to be ripped, broken, shoved aside as a demon forced its way out, and he had been glad enough to have managed, by and large, to escape notice. So, yes, it was a little hard to imagine what Jordan had seen in those moments to make him want to immortalize them.

"You told me once that you separate your life into two parts: this part, and the part you spend with Mom and us. But I can't make the distinction like that. You can't help but have been affected by this." He shrugged again slightly and glanced at the painting, like the picture was words for him. "It's had to have made you somewhat into who you are."

A part of his mind was still struggling with the idea, but he thought for a moment that he understood. The transformation Jordan had witnessed had been like a door that had allowed him forever into his father's partially-secreted psyche. And to him, that door had been a lucky and significant chance.

He swallowed an inopportune lump in his throat. "Maybe it has."

Jordan looked at him suddenly, his eyes young and open with questions. And then, just as quickly, he quirked a corner of his mouth and his eyes were once again those of an adult. "So you don't hate it?"

Vincent thought about his answer. He hated the transformations. He hated the relief he felt after feeding them blood, hated the surge of adrenaline at the beginning of each hunt, hated the dreams the routine sometimes spawned because he tried not to think about any of it while he was home. Hated the contradiction he couldn't ever resolve in himself, hating and tolerating, distancing and remembering. Hated the way it tainted the edges of his real life.

"I don't hate what it represents," he finally replied, because it was the truth.

Jordan's smile broadened, and there was more acceptance there than Vincent could acknowledge, more than he would ever see in his own mirror. "Good enough."

* * *

Opening presents around the tree was entirely for Connie and she reveled in the attention as she jumped around the room, shouting and crawling into laps and excitedly ripping through the wrapping paper. The presents themselves were barely given a second glance: some stuffed animals, a new sleeper, a few winter outfits and some candy she wasn't allowed to have until after lunch. Eventually Vincent found himself with an armful of dozing toddler again. Not that he minded.

Jordan's gift to Farah was a necklace and a pair of earrings that convinced Vincent, if nothing else had, that their finances were definitely doing all right. Farah's gift to Jordan was a new set of brushes, some new paints, and a long smock which, she told him firmly, took away any excuse he might have for getting paint on his clothes.

For their parents, Jordan and Farah had had a family portrait done. Classically painted, it captured not only the likeness, but the energy of a young couple with a two year-old, and Jordan made sure to point out that he had decorated the frame himself. Tifa knew moments after opening it exactly where she was going to put it.

The last gift under the tree was for both Jordan and Farah. In an envelope, not a cheque like Jordan had feared, was a receipt for transportation to and accommodations in Cosmo Canyon. And, of course, an offer from his parents to babysit.

Once Jordan and Farah had finished trying in vain to give the gift back – they couldn't take it, it was too much, but, oh, wouldn't it be nice? – Farah stood and began to gather up some of the paper as Jordan collected the coffee cups. Halfway through clearing a space around the tree, however, she stopped and turned to look at her parents-in-law. "Did you open your gifts to each other?"

Tifa smiled and Vincent thought he detected something faintly, smugly pleased in her expression for a moment. "No, we don't exchange gifts anymore. Last Festival we just went out to eat and then took a scenic route home."

"That sounds nice," Farah admitted. "I suppose after awhile you don't really need anything else."

Vincent had never needed anything else. But if finding him a present to exchange on those mornings had made Tifa smile, he had been happy to accept.

They left not long after, trudging the few blocks back to their house so that Jordan and Farah could get themselves and Connie ready for a trip to Farah's parents' house for dinner. Content and quiet, Tifa was humming to herself, her arm predictably looped through his, her breath misting out amidst the floating snow.

"This was a good morning," she observed suddenly. "Everyone got what they wanted." She sighed with a hum and adjusted her hat. "Everyone but me."

Vincent was determined not to react. Somehow she had found out. And without the surprise, all that was left was the game. "What did you want that you didn't get?" he asked her mildly.

"Oh, an end to the suspense," she replied, glancing up at him with a small, self-satisfied smile. "To find out if it's really what I think it is. Unless, of course, it's for another woman, which it wouldn't be."

Vincent smirked. She had noticed that it was missing, though he had only borrowed it for a few hours from her jewelery box, to get her size. Another woman indeed. "I don't know what you're talking about," he told her simply. "And I don't know that there's anything hidden for you on the shelf you can't reach in the closet."

"Is it wrapped?"

"No."

"Is it in a box at least?"

"Of course."

She squeezed his arm suddenly, and it was a moment before she settled again. "I didn't look for it, you know." She tugged in complete innocence at one of her mits.

"Yes you did."

Her smile widened. "Is it just a present?"

"_Just_ a present?"

She stopped walking abruptly, and all trace of their previous banter was fading from her expression when he turned to look at her. And he knew what she meant. Years after Jordan's birth, on their fifth or sixth anniversary, he had asked her if it mattered to her. And she had lied and said no. But he had never brought it up again.

"No, it isn't just a present," he admitted. "It's a…" He struggled for a title. "…a token."

A light seemed to go on in her eyes. "A symbol?"

He nodded. And then he took her hand, feeling the need for a gesture. "In every respect, except one, you're my wife. I looked into getting a certificate, but the Turks erased everything. According to society, I no longer exist, so I can't get married. But I could buy you a ring, at least, even if it's overdue by about twenty-five years."

She blinked her eyes suddenly and turned away. "It never mattered to me," she told him softly, sincerely. "You didn't have to. And, anyway, what about you? I'll be wearing a ring, but you … "

To head off further protests, he drew out a chain he had put on underneath his shirt that morning. The last part of his surprise, but it couldn't be helped. On the end, dangled a ring. "It fits this one," he explained, indicating the third finger on his right hand.

Tifa stared at the golden band for a second before finally giving a helpless laugh and lowering her face to wipe at her eyes.

"It never mattered to you," Vincent mocked quietly.

"Shut up." She shoved him firmly and then pulled him back with her arm through his as they started walking again. "It didn't matter. I knew you were going to be with me until … well, until the end." She sniffled once and swept her mit absently over her cheeks. "It didn't matter because I knew it was different for you. A ring would just be a reminder."

"I need reminders," he interrupted her firmly, and then consciously gentled his voice, surprised by his own tone. "I need things I can't ignore."

She was looking up at him steadily. "You're not going to be alone afterward."

Yes, of course. He squeezed her hand. Jordan would be a constant reminder.

"So, was that a yes?"

She glanced away, looking out into the snow, and he felt the tension begin to leave her body. "I suppose, if it means that much to you. Even though you never vacuum under the sofa."

He gave a quiet scoff. "You never rinse your dishes."

She chuckled suddenly and tightened her grip on his arm. "I think you love me anyway, Mr. Lockhart."

And he was startled into a quiet laugh as they started up the walk.


	7. Bittersweet

**Bittersweet**

She was propped up in bed, sleeping again, her hands folded patiently in her lap as if she really, truly had intended to stay awake for him this time. He left the door open as he entered, just in case Jordan decided to pop over, and came to sit in the chair he had brought up from the dining room.

"Tifa."

She took a soft breath through her nose, from the tube that fed her easy oxygen, and opened her eyes. Eyes that brightened as soon as they recognized him. "Vince … "

She was exhausted from earlier attempts to fix the blankets. Most of the time her breath was enough to push out his entire name. Not that he minded hearing Lily's informal title once in awhile.

"Breakfast," he told her as he brought the tray around and set it up on the bed. Oatmeal, tea, a few slices of an orange, most of which he would be feeding to her. The last time she had tried to lift a teacup to her lips with unconsciously trembling hands, it had spilled everywhere and she had cried a little. And though he had done his best to let her be as independent as she wanted for as long as she wanted, he drew the line at letting her burn herself. And she did her best to be gracious about it.

The oranges she could feed herself, but the oatmeal he scooped up and brought to her mouth for her. She watched him all the time, and he met her eyes as often as he could. Mealtimes had quickly become his favorite part of the day, when she was aware enough to smile a little and sometimes touch his hand. So tired, she slept for most of the day, and the doctor had finally given them a time frame. A few weeks, maybe a month at the most. At ninety-two, she had survived most of her contemporaries and escaped a lot of the big age-related maladies. Her body was simply worn out and was shutting down. She would probably go in her sleep.

A tiny bit of oatmeal dripped down her chin. He rescued it carefully, not willing to let any go to waste.

She turned her head away for the next bite and Vincent resisted the urge to sigh as he took the spoon away. Mealtimes were becoming shorter and shorter.

She drank a few sips of her tea and then sat back again, content simply to be with him until she drifted off. He smiled a little and tried to be worthy of that serene, knowing gaze, which was most of their conversation now. He had decided, long before it had come to this, that she would never see him breaking. He would never express his grief to her, never tell her about the dreams that made him reluctant to go to sleep, alone in Jordan's old bedroom. Perhaps he couldn't control when she was going to die, or how he felt when he inevitably thought about it, but he could, to some extent, control how she felt about leaving him.

No sorrow, no regrets, no distress on his account; not if he could help it. Not even if she said she wanted it.

And she had said. Sometimes, when she had the strength, she asked pointed questions about his future, pushed every button she could think of, because 'pretending he didn't feel anything wasn't going to make it easier'. Some days she made it very hard to keep a lid on his heartache.

But keep a lid on it he had, and would until she was gone. Both of them knew the truth, and they didn't need to talk about it – mostly because he didn't want her to spend the time she had left trying to fix what wouldn't be fixed. He had made a decision, he had known the consequences from the beginning, he was ready enough to face them. All she needed to do was not worry about anything, and he would be adequately satisfied with not having to bring any baggage of atonement away from her death. She would never believe that he would be fine, but they could pretend. They had gotten very good at pretending.

Her smile twitched a little wider suddenly and she slid her fingers across the bedspread toward him, a silent petition for his hand. That was something he could do.

"You probably won't miss … " A breath. " … having to take care of me this way."

He raised an eyebrow. She was going to try. Once, he had watched her fall asleep in the middle of a sentence. "If you say so."

Her smile threatened to spill over into a grin. Faded, battered, weary, hidden behind her age, but her grin was still the same.

After a moment, he forced his eyes away and busied himself tidying the dishes. Deliberately refusing to think about the morning he would have no reason to make oatmeal, no teacup to fill with tea, no routine to blindly, devotedly follow. The morning he would realize that he had had a purpose, he had been someone to somebody, but that it had ended, just like any dream realistically had to. And he had woken up to what had always been the inevitable truth: he was immortal, cursed, and all alone.

"Will you read to me … until I fall asleep?"

It had taken surprisingly little to adjust into the role of her caretaker. Even if it had all changed almost overnight. Reasonably healthy one minute, and the next she had been bedridden with a nasty case of bronchitis. And though her body had struggled to scramble up that increasingly vertical incline toward recovery, it had never actually gotten there. And she had eventually been too weak to wash herself, or eat by herself, or get up to use the bathroom, though that had become less of an issue as her appetite had waned.

It had made her angry for awhile, as she had naturally fought against the reality of a weakened immune system and all of the costs it had entailed. But she had been willing after nearly a month, after the doctor had finally spelled out the finale on the horizon, to start accepting the truth.

And Vincent had been very grateful when, one evening, instead of being upset and miserable and sick, things he had no control over as much as he wished he had, she had finally seemed to look at him and realize what she was putting him through. And, like an apology, had asked him to bring in a deck of cards.

"What do you want me to read?"

It had been like getting her back from a dark pit – if only for a few months before the world ended, anyway. And he had taken it like a gift in the midst of what should probably have been blackening grief, one last brilliant shine of memories before night fell. Feeding her, washing her, dressing her, tucking her in. Seeing her smile, hearing her laugh, though the sound had become little more than gentle gasps, knowing she was mostly, finally at peace with reality – and being able to share in all of it, to forget that the end was so close, whenever she opened her eyes.

She glanced briefly at a thin red book on the night table. "That."

He leaned over to pick it up. And almost immediately recognized it for poetry.

"Connie brought it over yesterday … when she and little Trina came to visit."

He had never really had an interest in poetry, though he would admit to himself that some pieces were well thought out, meaningful. With a long-suffering sigh that she would know was mostly false, and mostly so that he could see a corner of that smug, intimate smile, he opened it.

The pages turned automatically to one that was dog-eared.

"That's one I like," she told him. The interval, he noticed, between when she closed her eyes and when she opened them again was getting longer. Soon she would be out until he woke her for lunch.

He cleared his throat, not sure he should be ready to pave her way. But happy enough right now to fill the moments before she nodded off.

"_Surprised by joy – impatient as the Wind, I turned to share the transport – Oh! With whom, but thee, deep buried in the silent tomb _… "

He frowned a little and glanced at her, not sure if she had meant to lead him to a verse about death. But she had her eyes closed, listening, and he knew he wasn't going to make an audible objection. She could have her way; it was only a poem.

" … _that spot which no vicissitude can find? Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind – but how could I forget thee? Through what power, even for the least division of an hour, have I been so beguiled as to be blind to my most grievous loss_."

He realized with an uncomfortable suddenness that he might have written this, years from now, at a moment when he turned and looked, on his way to or from a hunting ground, and saw the sun rising out of a white horizon. And, realizing it was beautiful, would suddenly remember as surely as the sun rose that she hadn't seen it, and that all of that magnificence had been wasted on someone for whom joy would always be equal parts pain.

" – _that thought's return was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore, save one, one only, when I stood forlorn, knowing my heart's best treasure was no more; that neither present time, nor years unborn could to my sight that heavenly face restore_ … "

She had fallen asleep. He slowly closed the book and put it back on the night stand. And simply watched her for a minute as his thoughts turned over.

It hadn't been a conversation she had been looking for, with her questions, with her reminders. Not precisely trying to undermine his efforts to maintain normalcy, not even just being stubborn, but wanting – since he wouldn't let her sacrifice her peace of mind for his – to make sure he was letting himself feel, before it was too late to go back and prepare himself.

She knew all of his buttons, just as she knew exactly when and how to press them. And he silently cursed the fact, unsuccessfully pinching at the ache that had started with the bridge of his nose.


	8. One More Threshold

**One More Threshold**

_Sorry I had to go away_  
_Tomorrow's just another day_  
_Without you here I'll have to say:_  
_Hold on to love, Hold on to love_

– _How's Your Head_, Third Day

* * *

Any closer and it might have severed his spine, Jed told him in his offhand way as if he was trying to tell a joke, grinning through his beard and his whiskey breath as he expertly fed the surgical thread through the needle and told him to hold still. It was a joke, almost, Vincent thought to himself as he frowned against the inevitably un-anesthetized prick of stitches. An injury like that would have been an inconvenience, definitely, but it never would have been fatal. And maybe not even a real danger, where danger meant the fear of being discovered in a vulnerable, paralyzed state by another predator. Or a human, he supposed.

Because once, he had woken up just outside of Nibelheim, minus his chocobo, with no memory of how he had gotten so close to home. When the last thing he had recalled had been garbled through the filter of Chaos. Injured, then, with a broken leg. And he had come to the conclusion that Chaos, more intelligent than the others (though Vincent hated having to recognize the fact) had taken him most of the way back when he had been unable to do so himself.

Jed never asked him what he did to get these wounds that would never look enough like knifings to bother lying about them. He never even asked after scars that should have been like a road map over his skin by now. He stuck to small conversations with himself most of the time – not so strange considering that he obviously lived alone, and had lived alone for long enough to have gotten his basement living quarters into their present state. And Vincent was forced to accept the truth now, when he used to try his best not to go to the same underground surgeon more than once or twice. In three years, he had come here four times; five, counting today. No use in denying: he was lonely for friendly, incurious human interaction.

He checked his watch.

"Get ready, Smiley."

He tensed a little a moment before Jed tugged the stitches tight. Then there was a snip, and Vincent pulled his shirt back into place.

"Good as new. Price's the usual."

He left some gil. This time there was a small tip; he wondered if Jed would take it for a mistake. It had been a long time since he had felt able to trust anyone.

He shrugged into his coat at the door.

"Take care 'yourself, Smiley. Make 'em stories about how I shoulda seen the other guy."

It was Jed's regular farewell, and Vincent could remember it when he couldn't remember the face of the young woman from whom bought his infrequent groceries.

It was nearly time to go. He walked across the street to the stables in the light drizzle of a dusk that was rapidly turning into night and pulled a small flask out of an inside pocket. He stopped to take a quick swig before capping it and reaching for his cigarettes. One, for the road, because he was going to have to quit. Again.

Though he felt anything but bitter about it. This morning he had looked in the mirror, actually looked, and had remembered himself for a moment. It had been like walking into her arms after years of being away from home. It had felt good; he had made himself stop to watch the sunrise on his way home. Almost desperate, he had grudgingly admitted, to hold onto that feeling, like something sharp and hot had been driven into the ice around his heart. He had been able to imagine her, for the first time in shamefully close to a decade, encouraging him, teasing him, telling him she was proud of him.

It was like pins and needles, stepping into water that was just too warm. But he could still remember what it felt like to be mostly human.

The ride itself took nearly two days, even without stopping for the night. Three hours after dawn, he found himself being ushered into New Junon casually with the morning commerce. He was grateful not to have to produce papers. Kalm had grown into a thriving port, and he had stopped staying there after an incident where even papers hadn't let him in with a weapon on his arm he couldn't remove.

Things were changing so quickly, and he hated it when the evidence reminded him that he couldn't catch up fast enough. Soon, he knew, even Nibelheim would be giving him a pink slip. And it would be time to find another place to hide, another coffin, away from civilization. It was his future, he needed to accept, as long as he needed to hunt for blood to keep his body his own. And he guessed that was going to remain the truth for awhile longer; _they_, regrettably, seemed unwearied by the passage of time.

New Junon had been built almost entirely over the old city, and, by design, very little of the original harbor colony remained. Even the massive docks had been remodeled during the restoration. Vincent headed first for the inn, and then, after glancing up at a street sign, pulled a piece of crumpled paper out of his pocket. The address was smeared, but readable in her neat, cursive writing. Belatedly, he patted some dust from his coat and tugged his wrinkled shirt into some kind of order before heading north, along roads he was curiously pleased not to recognize.

He had hardly finished knocking on the door when she answered, and something in him squeezed tight as she broke into a candidly delighted grin. It was the differences that saved him, however, yet again. This girl had freckles on her nose, her lips were thinner, her eyes were blue. He forced himself to take a breath and twitched a corner of his mouth, knowing anything closer to a smile would look artificial.

Trina didn't seem disappointed by his greeting's lack of enthusiasm. She clasped his arms in a wordless animated welcome before sliding her hands down into his initially unprepared grip. "I'm so glad you made it. I … I'm so happy to see you." She seemed ready to continue, her mouth moving in silent stutters, until she evidently gave up on words and simply bounced up on her toes to kiss him briefly on the cheek.

It was a shock, for a moment, to have been given something so intimate from someone who didn't really know him very well. And he was temporarily at a loss for the socially appropriate reaction. He swallowed. "Thank you," he told her quietly in something too close to a whisper, and then he grimaced, feeling utterly idiotic.

For a second he knew he had caught her off guard. Her grin faded into a look of awkward embarrassment and her fingers began to droop out of his own, possibly misunderstanding. He felt the uncomfortable sensation of a surfacing blush and inwardly cursed himself. It had been a long time, though at her wedding reception he had given her a kiss on the cheek. This wasn't so different, was it? Two people, family, sharing a familiar greeting. Still, it had been awhile, and he knew it was going to take some time to become reacquainted with things as generally assumed as informal physical contact.

The second passed eventually and she seemed to gather herself. Gently aware, her smile returned, well-garnished with mild amusement. "You don't get many kisses from pretty girls these days, I guess."

"Not recently," he replied, grateful for her light-hearted tone, the opportunity to regain at least a bit of his composure.

She grinned again at him, sincere, unaffected, still delighted to have him here. "Come in. I'll put some tea on. Nathan's at work until two, but Brody should be waking up from his nap any minute. And my mother and sister are coming over for supper later."

He felt like squirming as he followed her in and closed the door. Trina visiting him, he visiting Trina and her small family – that was enough to start. Trying to make conversation with a fifty-odd year old Connie and her second daughter … he didn't feel quite so prepared for. But he had accepted this role willingly, happily, even, he reminded himself. What was the alternative, after all? Continuing to live without any ties to anyone?

Tifa had been right. What was there to do?

He stepped out of his boots before following her into a hallway near the back of the house. She opened the door to what looked like a spare room and invited him to glance around with a gesture. "I hope it suits. I know the paint is purple."

He straightened up. "I have a room at the inn," he began.

Trina frowned in what looked like slightly-amused confusion. "You're family. You don't have to stay at the inn." He didn't reply, and after a moment her expression faltered with some uncertainty. "Would you rather stay at the inn?"

Inns were sometimes loud, sometimes with unwashed sheets and communal bathrooms. He had gotten accustomed to them, but he rarely enjoyed staying, and seldom stayed for more than one night. "No, not really."

She grinned again with a chuckle, as if he had made a joke. "All right then. This is your room. There's a private washroom attached, and … " She hesitated and her smile became a little tight as she glanced in and pointed at a closet. "If you want … " she stressed, as if she was afraid of offending him, " … some of my grandfather's clothes are in that closet."

Which was another way of saying she had noticed he didn't have a bag with him, and that his present clothes were wrinkled and a little travel-worn.

He nodded briefly. "I left my things at the inn."

She gave a small self-conscious laugh and touched her forehead. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have assumed. I just … wasn't sure what you needed, and I wanted to make sure you had everything."

Charming. The similarities certainly went deeper than a few superficial facial features. "It's fine."

She glanced up at him, a hopeless half-smile on her face. "I don't really know you, do I?"

That wasn't going to matter. It surprised him, initially, to realize how much he didn't want it to matter. "Thank you for the room, Trina."

Her smile widened for a moment, the apologetic embarrassment in her eyes fading to a kind of understanding, as if she might have read something in what he hadn't said. They weren't strangers, they were family – like the word was a bridge of connection over whatever unknown history existed. The same word that had brought her into Nibelheim to find him. The same that had convinced him to invite her into the previously undisturbed solitude of his apartment. She had needed to find him. And he had needed to be found.

She took a sudden breath, as if to start over. "You're welcome, Vincent. And, please … " She hesitated a moment before touching the arm of his coat, and something in her expression made him realize that a part of him had come in the hopes of finding something long ago and familiar. Something that would convince him …

Jordan had found him in the house almost two weeks after his mother had died. He had been angry, of course, that Vincent had simply taken off before the funeral. But Vincent had been busy looking at something at the time – a picture, he seemed to recall – that he had found in a drawer while he had been gathering what few things he had wanted to retrieve from his old life. And Jordan, a man who had started his life looking for answers in a world that had continually only offered questions, and had come to middle age without any solutions, and unfairly, prematurely bereft of his beloved wife, Farah, had come to sit with him.

'Where have you been? Dad? Vincent?'

Eventually, Jordan had seemed ready to accept what he had probably known all along underneath his own anger – anger sparked by the splitting grief he had almost had to stumble through entirely on his own. The words, however – not quite an apology, not quite forgiveness – hadn't meant as much then as they did now.

'Just promise me you'll come back.'

Looking for something that would convince him that it was all right, it was time, to take a firm step forward that could also be seen as a step back.

At least for awhile.

Trina was undeniably sincere, her fingers now gripping his sleeve as if he had been trying to disappear. Tifa's face, Tifa's hair, maybe even a little bit of Tifa's magic. But her eyes, almost softly pleading, were suddenly predominantly Jordan. " … make yourself at home."


End file.
